"Am I to be invited?" asked Adelaide Maud simply.
"Mrs. and Miss Dudgeon," said Elma in a hollow voice. "Do you think Mrs. Dudgeon will come?" she asked in a melancholy manner.
"Not if Mr. Leighton looks like that," said Adelaide Maud. She turned in a pettish manner away from him and gazed at Elma.
Elma burst out laughing.
"Oh, Cuthbert, I do think you are horrid to Adelaide Maud."
Adelaide Maud sat up again looking perfectly delighted.
"Now there," she said, "I have been waiting for years for some one to say that about Mr. Leighton. Thank you so much, dear. It's so perfectly true. For years I have been amiable and for years he has been--a----"
"A brute," said Elma placidly.
"Yes," said Adelaide Maud. "And I've got to go on pretending to be a girl of spirit with a mamma who won't understand the situation, and--and--I get no encouragement at all. It's a horrid world," said Adelaide Maud.
Cuthbert rose from the easy chair, with a look in his eyes which Elma had never seen.